Europe: Britain's dilemma
Sir: How refreshing to have in your journal, not for the first time, such sound sense about Britain's dilemma with regard to re- surgent Europe, instead of the customary parrotry of the marketeers and the anti- marketeers! Mr Robert Skidelsky (23 May) disposes effectually of the myth of the 'special retationship'—Britain as a not particular welcome hanger-on of the American giant—and of the Commonwealth fallacy. Of course Britain is part of Europe, and it is in Britain's interest to get inside the Brussels Community if she can: it took many, many years for this truth to penetrate the skulls of our politicians and top civil
servants!
But surely the question is not whether or
not we should join the Common Market 'provided the terms are right' but whether, in existing circumstances, the road to a European identity and policy goes through Brussels at all. For purposes of his argu- ment Mr Skidelsky postulates, as he admits, a consistency on the part of the committed 'Europeans', and a stability and coherence of the Community, which do not in fact obtain. That's all right. But what he appears to me to skate a bit lightly over is the extent to which, after the two decades of a 'divide and rule' policy, Britain is still suspect on the other side of the Channel. We have been too long bemused by the official protestations of the 'friendly Five'. The continental nations, I suggest, and France in particular, may well look askance at a candidate for Community membership who has still not really learnt to 'speak European' (the evidence abounds), and specifically because of a continued obsession with 'the wider international concerns in which the British have sought to dissolve it [the Community]'. Dedicated Europeans on the Continent, as Mr Skidelsky says, are wary lest, under British and Scandinavian influence, the close preserve of the EEC be transformed out of all recognition into 'some huge free trade area embracing not only America but Japan as well'.
Consequently, while sharing Mr Skidel- sky's belief in Britain's European identity (and she has nowhere else to go), I cannot but endorse his wry conclusion: that 'Britain is bound to keep on knocking at the Euro- pean door; and the Europeans are almost bound to keep refusing it admittance'.
Association on economic matters with the Community, not membership, is probably all that is practicable now. But this does not preclude mustering support for a British government's efforts, with France, to achieve 'organised co-operation' in the political field for the whole of Europe—which was also de Gaulle's objective. Instead of this, we have Mr Michael Stewart's pathetic efforts to keep in with the United States by seeking to use NATO as the crucible for scEwR (Standing Commission on East-West Rela- tions). Why not an ad hoc European body, or even a re-vamped Council of Europe, which has eighteen European Members, and has been a pioneer, in non-political matters, in detente?
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